


Corporate Hell

by Zab43



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Hell, Hell is a corporation, Hell is just administration, Non-Alternative Universe - Corporate, PowerPoint, Real Life Problems, Tormenting The Damned, Workplace, Yeah - I'm having a bad day in the office
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27683791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zab43/pseuds/Zab43
Summary: Hastur and Ligur head to earth to get some ideas about tormenting the damned - Hastur's methods are somewhat unorthodox...
Relationships: Hastur & Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Corporate Hell

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably only make sense to someone who has worked in the corporate environment for way too long....

“It says it’s by Hieronymus Bosch” Ligur read carefully.

Hastur was puzzled “yeah, but wassit meant to be?”

“Meant to be us innit?” Ligur was unsure about this, but the label said ‘Hell’ so he assumed he was correct.

“What: *us* us? Which one is me?” The tall demon asked, studying the painting carefully.

“That ones a bit froggy” offered Ligur

“Where?”

“Next to that naked guy. Well kinda eating him I fink”

“Why are they all naked? S’not natural. They’d get cold. Hell's right cold, and damp. What about boots too? They’ll get wet feet stood around wiv no boots”.

Ligur sighed “it’s meant to be Hell innit? They’re being tormented and suffering terrible retri…retri.. retriboosions for their sins like”.

“What by not havin’ any clothes? Dunt sound too bad to me. Cold, but not too bad. If I was tormenting people for their sins I’d do more than take their knickers away”. Hastur stopped a moment, considering what he may or may not do to torment damned souls.

“We’re meant to be tormentin’ them ya dumb toad! S’why we’re here innit: gettin’ ideas. Beelzebub says we gotta be more imaginative, so I thought we should ‘ave a look at what the humans think Hell’s like”.

“...but humans ‘as never been to Hell have they? They don’t know what it’s like. All this sitting around wiv no clothes on. It’s not like that. Wouldn’t catch me without my coat on, nor gloves neither. Hell ain’t a nudist colony now is it?”

Ligur considered this. It was a reasonable point. He scrutinised the painting again. “They’re being et too - look see that one’s half been et, and that one’s stuck in like an egg or sommat, and they’re poking that one with a sharp stick and them ones over there are all lying on the ground, be proper miserable lying on the ground in Hell wouldn’t it?” Ligur was unsure whether this counted as being tormented.

“Yeah, but, y’know. I’d have expected something a bit more Helly if ya see what I mean” Hastur was scratching his nose as he continued inspecting the painting.

“What’d’ya mean: Helly”

Hastur considered his answer… “well, y’know, like the stuff we does in Hell. Filing, and typing up reports an’ stuff. Maybe gettin’ drunk”.

“Ain’t much of a torment gettin’ drunk is it?” Ligur objected.

His companion answered emphatically: “tis if you gotta do a presentation next morning wiv a terrible hangover!”

“So you reckon we should get ‘em drunk an make ‘em do a presentation the next morning?” Ligur was sceptical.

“Yeah - in the big room wiv everyone there, an’ they have to do it on PowerPoint with the boxes properly lined up an’ graphs with dual axis-es an’ everything, and I’d ask ‘em loads of questions. I hate it when there’s loads of questions”. There was a hint of real threat to his words.

“It wouldn’t make such a good paintin’ though would it?” Objected Ligur “an’ I don’t think they had computers in 1500 or whenever”.

“That’d make it ever worser though wouldn’t it? Not even havin’ a computer AND having to do a graph an’ all them little text boxes all on separate bits of parchment” Hastur was triumphant.

“We’m meant to be learnin’ from this Hastur - no good us just giving ‘em another slide show to do. That’s what you do already! That’s why Beelzebub sent us ‘ere. She said ‘administration isn’t adequate torture Ligur - you an’ toad-face better shape up’!”

Hastur looked up surprised “toad-face! Who’s toad-face?”

Ligur turned to his companion hoping to find he was joking, but he looked genuinely confused. He sighed heavily. “Dunt matter. What she meant was we gotta do something to the souls of the damned other than making them use pivot tables and embed graphs. Apparently that’s not torturous enough”.

Hastur was obviously going to object to this. As far as he was concerned using a computer was about as torturous as it had got. As soon as he’d been forced to use one he’d hit on his idea of getting the souls to help out. If he hated it so much it was bound to be just as bad for them, and it had the advantage that he never had to learn to line up text boxes on PowerPoint too.

This had, it’s true, led to some confusion among the damned. They generally did rotations. After ten years of being fed rotten fish guts and swimming around electric-eel infested swamps with Dagon, Hastur’s threat of an eternity of spreadsheet and slide-show usage was very unexpected. It wasn’t quite what Beelzebub classed as torture though.

Ligur jumped in before Hastur could start up on the iniquities of computer presentations “what about them animal things? We could make some of them”.

Hastur grinned “and get it to eat ‘em when the graphs go funny. You know, when you gotta update the monthly figures and the formatting goes all off wiv the wrong colours and stuff”.

It was better than nothing. “Yeah, that sorta thing” agreed his companion in a resigned way.

They headed back to Hell to have a go.

Even without the drawbacks of traditional physics and biology the demons’ attempt at the peculiar creatures of the nightmare world of Hieronymous Bosch were not entirely successful. The threat of being devoured by monstrous abominations didn’t really work if said abomination whined pitifully and had a tendency to curl up and sleep when left alone with a soul to ravage.

At Ligur’s insistence they’d tried the whole ‘no clothes’ thing too. At first the humans shivered miserably, huddling their hands around the mugs of coffee Hastur provided. After a while he’d started feeling sorry for them and helped scavenge coats and blankets, much to Ligur’s annoyance.

“...but they’re all cold an’ stuff, one was sneezing! An’ I don’t like seeing all them boobs and belly-buttons an’ stuff, it’s weird. The other demons all think we’ve gone peculiar making them work in the nude like that”.

“Maybe if you did something other than data-entry and presentations wiv ‘em eh Hastur? Y’know…”Ligur winked heavily. Hastur just looked confused.

“We tried getting them creatures to eat ‘em. They didn’t want to. Besides I don’t want to give Gerald an upset tummy again. Last time he mucked over the whole warehouse and I had to get a mop and bucket for it”.

Ligur sighed again. He knew Hastur had got quite attached to a weird looking bird/dog/pig hybrid with big sad eyes and a mouth too large for it’s little head. He’d called it Gerald and discovered it liked salami and pickled eggs. If it ate anything else it tended to get diarrhea.

In desperation he suggested “maybe you could get the damned souls to mop up after Gerald? That’d be a proper sort of torment”.

Hastur considered “that’d mean making Gerald ill deliberate like. I don’t want to make ‘im ill. Look at ‘im: them big shiny eyes and his little curly tail. Awwww. I couldn’t hurt ‘im”.

Ligur eyed his companion warily. This had the potential to get serious “we’ll get in trouble with Beelzebub unless we think of sommat soon y’know. Souls are meant to be in an eternal agony of torment, not drinking coffee and doing your admin”.

The frog demon knew his companion was right. It was just difficult. He couldn’t really think of anything worse than he was doing to them already - he’d even switched to instant coffee and UHT milk, which was disgusting. That and the uncomfortable chairs, desks at the wrong height, dried up sandwiches for lunch and enforced ‘ice breaker’ games at the start of each week. What could be more horrendous than that?

Suddenly he had an idea. “What about a team building weekend? Nuffin worse than that! In fact what about a whole week? Five nights in a crappy hotel together in the middle of nowhere, eatin’ and drinkin’ together every night. I’ll make it a rule that they have to talk to someone they don’t know every day - networking right? - learn three key fact about everyone else before the end of the week, an’ agree a plan to take ‘ownership of their own professional development’ an’, an’, an’….”

At this his inspiration ran out, but Ligur gleefully picked up the baton “make them play games and write a corporate engagement strategy and come up with a plan for greater colleague motivation and increasing net promoter scores among the imps. Yeah, we could do loads of stuff to ‘em”.

The two demons headed back up to earth to find a likely venue to carry out their evil plan.

**Author's Note:**

> At least that's one (the only?) bonus of a pandemic - no corporate team building weekends!


End file.
